25 short questions and answers on victorians to today, based on the official handbook. Read them, then test yourself with the free mock tests.
It became the largest empire the world has ever seen, with an estimated population of more than 400 million people.
In the mid-1840s the potato crop failed. About a million people died and about 1.5 million left Ireland, many for America and Britain.
A movement from the late 1830s that campaigned for every man to have the vote and for other reforms to elections.
Before 1870 a wife's property passed to her husband. Laws in 1870 and 1882 let married women keep their own earnings and property.
A Victorian engineer who built the Great Western Railway (London Paddington to Bristol), tunnels, bridges and ships, including the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
An exhibition in 1851 in Hyde Park, London, held in the Crystal Palace, a huge glass building. It showed goods and inventions from around the world.
1899 to 1902. Britain fought settlers of Dutch origin (the Boers) in South Africa.
A writer born in India in 1865. He wrote The Jungle Book, the Just So Stories and the poem 'If'. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.
In the 19th century the Irish nationalist movement grew. The Fenians wanted full independence from the UK. Others, led by Charles Stewart Parnell, wanted Home Rule: Ireland would stay in the UK but have its own parliament.
The Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin was a rebellion against British rule. In 1922 Ireland split: the south became the Irish Free State (a republic from 1949) and Northern Ireland stayed in the UK.
Conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s between people who wanted to stay in the UK and people who wanted a united Ireland. About 3,000 people died. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 brought peace and the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The Great Depression of the 1930s brought mass unemployment, while new industries like cars and aviation grew. John Maynard Keynes was an influential economist.
In 1940 the British army was trapped on the French coast. Civilian volunteers in small boats helped rescue more than 300,000 soldiers from the beaches.
German bombing of British cities in 1940–41, especially London, Coventry and Liverpool.
The USA joined after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The war in Europe ended in May 1945. The war with Japan ended in August 1945 after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A 1942 report by William Beveridge naming five 'Giant Evils': Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. It was the basis of the welfare state.
Introduced by R.A. Butler, it gave free secondary education to everyone in England and Wales.
He lost the 1945 election but was PM again from 1951 to 1955. He died in 1965 and had a state funeral. In 2002 he was voted the greatest Briton of all time.
There were labour shortages, so people came from the West Indies, India, Pakistan and later Bangladesh. The ship Empire Windrush brought people from the Caribbean in 1948.
The 'Swinging Sixties' brought new fashion and music, such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Laws on divorce and abortion were liberalised.
Tony Blair's Labour government introduced devolution: the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly began in 1999. Gordon Brown became PM in 2007.
No party won a majority, so the Conservatives (David Cameron) and the Liberal Democrats (Nick Clegg) formed a coalition government.
From 1952 to 2022, the longest reign of any British monarch. Her Diamond Jubilee was in 2012. King Charles III succeeded her.
An association of countries, most once part of the British Empire, that support each other and work together towards shared goals in democracy and development. The monarch is its head. (The body that protects human rights is a different one: the Council of Europe.) Members also support the rule of law. The handbook says 54 members, so use 54 in the test (it is 56 today).
The United Nations (the UK is one of five permanent members of the Security Council), NATO, the Commonwealth and the Council of Europe, which created the European Convention on Human Rights.